U.S. hockey team expects to be among Olympic favorites

ARLINGTON, Va. – The U.S. hockey team has flipped the script since the last Winter Olympics.

The Americans expect to be among the favorites to win gold in six months at the Sochi Games after saying they were underdogs in 2010, when they won silver and were a goal away from knocking off the host Canadians in Vancouver, B.C.

“The only people that thought we had a chance were probably the guys in the locker room, or our coaches and management of USA Hockey,” standout forward Patrick Kane of the NHL Chicago Blackhawks said Monday. “This time, it’s different.”

USA Hockey invited 48 of its top prospects — including 16 players from its 2010 team — for off-ice workouts and meetings at the NHL Washington Capitals’ training facility.

“Even though we invited 48 guys, I got calls from a few agents, ‘Why not my guy?’ I get that,” said general manager David Poile, whose day job is running the NHL Nashville Predators. “We put some guys on the board that aren’t at this camp that we should be looking at. We’re totally open-minded.

“We have to take the 25 guys that give us the best chance to win.”

The players will get picked to play based on their body of work and how well they perform early in the NHL season. The final roster is expected to be announced Jan. 1 after Detroit and Toronto play in the NHL Winter Classic at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.

Brian Burke, the team’s general manager in 2010, set up an advisory group to assemble the U.S. roster.

“We’ll have much harder decisions to make picking this team than we had 2010,” Burke said. “That’s what you want.”

The advisory group met for five hours Sunday, spending some of that time on talking about a possible roster and some tough decisions it will have to make.

“We have 16 returning Olympians that have a chance to make the team,” Poile said. “We’ve got way more depth, and way more quality than we had in 2010.”